Spotter Network Technical Support, What Goes ?

[Lou Ruh]

Thanks Lou but this is one of the first e mail addresses I tried. If you send a message

Hi Lou: The address you suggested is one of the first that I attempted to establish contact. If you send an e mail to that address [email protected] , it will get bounced backed to you as UNDELIVERABLE.but appreciate your advice.

I did just do that within the last ten minutes. So far, no rejection. Was there more information in your undeliverable message?

 

[John Wetter]

Hi All, and thanks to @Lou Ruh for reaching out to me to point me here. I did get his email this morning as I routinely get email from folks.

Regarding the comment from @Jeff Duda - We've had a great 2016 with a huge number of reports submitted, likely thanks to RadarScope integration which has been great. We are still the only electronic method of reporting to the NWS that goes directly into their systems; via NWSchat and even directly into AWIPS2. I know of only two offices in the nation not getting SN data directly so we've made great strives in working with local offices to help them know and understand the data they receive from us. We've also been doing more work this summer to clean up data. We routinely review reports and follow up with spotters making low quality reports. You folks don't see this work though because you (thankfully) are not on the receiving end of it. Talking with many NWS offices though, they know our data is of a much higher quality than they often get via the phone and they appreciate information from trusted spotters & chasers.

Now onto the issue at hand...

@David Hodges - I can't find any emails or password resets for your account. While looking at your username from your screen shots above, I do see that you have not passed our training (you have a 0, so it looks like you haven't attempted it); this is why you do not have reporting rights in your client. Old versions didn't check for this but now we are. So, you will need to log in to spotternetwork.org (and you can if you can log in on your phone, you use the same information as in RS) and take the training. The training isn't hard, but it sets a base level of understanding that the NWS requires of people before reporting to them. This is another misconception in some of the chaser community is that a harder test will magically stop bad reports. I disagree with this as I have seen local Skywarn organizations with what I would consider a fairly difficult test, as well as organizations with an easy test... And both get garbage reports at times. Not all people focus to their training when around storms... But I digress.

Once you have taken the training and successfully pass the test, you will be able to report. As far as your logins, it is important to note that your login for spotternetwork.org is in no way tied to our support forum at stormhunter.org. Unless you've specifically signed up at stormhunter.org, you will not have an account and will need to create one. I don't see an account with the same username as you have in SN, so I'm not sure if you signed up as something else or simply don't have an account over there. We do support through a forum so others can see issues as really the incidents we see fall into a couple buckets: 1) there is a space or special character in the login somehow and therefore it won't work 2) Training hasn't been passed at a satisfactory level 3) location services don't have correct rights on a phone 4) the person is trying to log in with something other than their username and password from SN 5) Not understanding that there is a difference from the forum for support and the main SN site, essentially mis-reading the text at the bottom of radarscope.

Let me know if this helps and thanks again Lou for sending me an email this morning!

 

[David Hodges]

Hi All, and thanks to @Lou Ruh for reaching out to me to point me here. I did get his email this morning as I routinely get email from folks.

Regarding the comment from @Jeff Duda - We've had a great 2016 with a huge number of reports submitted, likely thanks to RadarScope integration which has been great. We are still the only electronic method of reporting to the NWS that goes directly into their systems; via NWSchat and even directly into AWIPS2. I know of only two offices in the nation not getting SN data directly so we've made great strives in working with local offices to help them know and understand the data they receive from us. We've also been doing more work this summer to clean up data. We routinely review reports and follow up with spotters making low quality reports. You folks don't see this work though because you (thankfully) are not on the receiving end of it. Talking with many NWS offices though, they know our data is of a much higher quality than they often get via the phone and they appreciate information from trusted spotters & chasers.

Now onto the issue at hand...

@David Hodges - I can't find any emails or password resets for your account. While looking at your username from your screen shots above, I do see that you have not passed our training (you have a 0, so it looks like you haven't attempted it); this is why you do not have reporting rights in your client. Old versions didn't check for this but now we are. So, you will need to log in to spotternetwork.org (and you can if you can log in on your phone, you use the same information as in RS) and take the training. The training isn't hard, but it sets a base level of understanding that the NWS requires of people before reporting to them. This is another misconception in some of the chaser community is that a harder test will magically stop bad reports. I disagree with this as I have seen local Skywarn organizations with what I would consider a fairly difficult test, as well as organizations with an easy test... And both get garbage reports at times. Not all people focus to their training when around storms... But I digress.

Once you have taken the training and successfully pass the test, you will be able to report. As far as your logins, it is important to note that your login for spotternetwork.org is in no way tied to our support forum at stormhunter.org. Unless you've specifically signed up at stormhunter.org, you will not have an account and will need to create one. I don't see an account with the same username as you have in SN, so I'm not sure if you signed up as something else or simply don't have an account over there. We do support through a forum so others can see issues as really the incidents we see fall into a couple buckets: 1) there is a space or special character in the login somehow and therefore it won't work 2) Training hasn't been passed at a satisfactory level 3) location services don't have correct rights on a phone 4) the person is trying to log in with something other than their username and password from SN 5) Not understanding that there is a difference from the forum for support and the main SN site, essentially mis-reading the text at the bottom of radarscope.

Let me know if this helps and thanks again Lou for sending me an email this morning!

Hi John:
Thanks for getting back to me. The whole point is that I have taken the training when I first joined Spotternetwork. I have full reporting rights as documented in the attached. This is a snapshot of a screenshot that I took .That's me. If I didn't have reporting prevledges my name and location would not appear on screen.
Whenever I sign into spotter network on any device other than my old smart phone it will not allow me to proceed. Says I need to take spotter training to acquire reporting rights. The problem is that this is in error. To make matters worse it is also not allowing me to update or enter any information . Let me know please if I can provide you with any additional information to fix this glitch. Thanks.
David Hodges- W3QEN

 

[David Hodges]

Try reaching out to John Wetter on Facebook if you are bouncing his email.

Sent from my XT1650 using Stormtrack mobile app

Thanks Ben!

 

[David Hodges]

I did just do that within the last ten minutes. So far, no rejection. Was there more information in your undeliverable message?

Hi Lou

If you have not already tried this, please send email to [email protected] with as much info as you can provide about the issue. Not the normal support path, but, it sounds like things may be very confused with your setup, and John may be able to help or point you in a good direction.

Did so Lou and am awaiting a reply. Thanks

 

[David Hodges]

I did just do that within the last ten minutes. So far, no rejection. Was there more information in your undeliverable message?

No rejection so far last time so am awaiting a reply. Thanks.

 

[John Wetter]

Hi David, I'll send an email back but it looks like I've really already addressed the items above.

 

[David Hodges]

I want to thank everyone for the feedback they gave me in regard to the technical issue I was having with Spotter Network. I want to let everyone know that I was able to solve the problem. It appears SN generated 2 accounts for me and didn't recognize the one that was my correct account.
John, I sent you a e mail regarding my findings.
Thanks again everyone for trying to be helpful.

 

[John Wetter]

Glad to hear you have resolved it, please be aware, SpotterNetwork does not make or delete accounts, only an end user with a valid email address to confirm the account creation can make a new account.

For the benefit of anyone else finding this in a search in the future, all Spotter Network support is handled at our support forum at www.stormhunter.org. Thanks!